Expectations
by Kuro49
Summary: A&R&K&R. Love is friendship set on fire. And they were all guilty when caught with the match in their hands.


This was inspired by the complicated relationships that originated from dramas (especially evil Chinese dramas that you just can't peel your eyes off of!! DD:) Featuring Rabi, Kanda, Allen and Rinali! (Aren't you shock it isn't just Rabi and Kanda??!! XDD) I wrote this with a perfect vision of a dramatic love rectangle, but my head can't wrap around complicated love triangles, let alone love rectangles, so please don't expect too much. D':

Pairings: Oh trust me, there is almost everything you can have from these four~ (except an obvious one b/c that one is just out of my league.)

Note: "_Love is friendship set on fire_." is a quote from Jeremy Taylor and I just found this to be all too fitting for this fic. I don't own ;)

XXX

**Expectations**

XXX

It was expected. He should have known. They _all_ should have known. It really was expected, of him, of him, of him, and of her. After all they were predictable like that, always have been, always will be. They had no desires to be any different than the moulds they were given. Handed.

Straight from the conveyor belts.

Rinali blushed. Kanda scoffed. Rabi grinned. And Allen just looked away.

"You two are just so cute like that!"

Jerry squealed as he pranced over, each large hand giving a pat to their individual backs. Rinali just shook her head at the cook's antics with a faint smile on her face. Jerry leaned in closer with a wink and whispered, "I won't tell Komui a thing."

He ruffled Allen's hair and with another laugh that sounded much too shrill to be a man's, he had already returned to the kitchen, flowery apron matching the bubbly air he resided in. The lace on his apron made Kanda's eyes burn with shame of knowing this so called man, if only his soba didn't taste so good.

He laid down his chopsticks and they all looked at him. Kanda slowly raised his gaze to meet theirs. They all expected an outburst, an insult, an expression; only he just stared at them all with a blank glaze to those blue eyes.

Bringing the teacup to his lips, he took a drink.

Rabi caught the silence by the tail and ceased the chance for his own contribution. With the usual lopsided grin and the familiar twinkle to his eye, he stood up, gripping Allen's shoulder in the process and Rinali's eyes were redirected to him.

"Yuu and I ain't gonna bother the two of you anymore." He tugged Kanda to his feet and with a grin on his lips he gave a little wave. "See you later, _lovebirds_."

She let out a quiet call of his name in annoyance to his teases but her gaze followed them until they disappeared through the doors of the cafeteria with that black blue stare and that warm gloved wave.

She picked up Kanda's cup from the table and took a drink. The lukewarm green tea gave her a sense of peace that was hard to hold on to when you lived in a war. She cracked open an eye and smiled at the boy, sitting across from her, lips still wrapping around a spoon full of pudding.

"I feel bad, Allen."

He almost dropped his spoon at those words.

He swallowed the pudding and cracked open his throat to welcome the words. "… Why?"

"Because I feel like it's my fault that they are together." Rinali drank the rest from the cup. Rinali smiled because she was never the type to place her own misery into other's hands. No matter how inviting it would always seem.

"What do you mean, Rinali?" Her name tasted sweet on his tongue and he spooned up some more pudding with a small tilt of his head, not understanding the girl's words as she blamed herself for the happiness of someone else. It just didn't seem to make sense.

"I mean I feel like I murdered someone."

Allen gave her a skeptical gaze before licking the inside of his spoon. "I think that might be stretching it a little."

"No, Allen, you've got to believe me. I feel so bad…" She ran a hand through the ends of her pig tails, feeling the black strands slip through her fingers. It was a bodily response to the mental stress she placed herself through, time and time again.

"Besides, what do you mean, 'together'? They have always been together like that." Allen shook his head with a smile as his mind tried to grasp the words that Rinali spewed. He smiled with a tilt of his lips; like the world was a good place and they were living just fine. "They're best friends."

Rinali looked at the table and gave a smile that could barely hide the misery seeping through. "Not anymore, Allen."

He placed the pudding container on the table with a gaze that urged her to explain. Because he was young and he don't know the world as she saw it.

"They're in love."

Rinali had a white grip on her skirt. She confessed, eyes a wavering brown that glittered in the ceiling lights.

"And it's all my fault."

000

"Come here." He murmured lightly, just loud enough for the other to hear but made sure no one else would have. The fading floral print on the walls gave an aging tint to his cheekbones. Kanda crossed his arms as a simple defensive mechanism that he had learned over the years and stood a few paces back from the man leaning against the horrid wallpaper.

"When have you become so needy?"

Kanda gave Rabi some time to think of an excuse, to tell him the truth, to make another lie that they could both believe in.

"…Since I fell in love with you."

And he felt although the time he had given the other was a complete waste.

"You lie and you don't even avert your gaze." Kanda pointed out with a plain stare at the man with his hands all over him.

"Yuu, let me tell you something." Rabi raised a hand to curve around the Japanese's cheek. There was a grin that was lingering on his lips and Kanda had an urge to wipe it all away. "Liars don't avert eye contact, nor do they seem nervous. Almost always, they don't even differ than how they usually are."

And then Rabi was kissing up his jaw, lips lingering on the skin. His fingers traced the dip between the collarbones and his hand gripped his hip harder. Rabi's mouth met the lobe of Kanda's ear before he spoke, words let out in puffs of hot air.

"The lie is in the lie itself, Yuu-chan."

Kanda made no move to stop him. So they just leaned back and relished in the warmth human contact can bring. The two of them had almost forgotten how good skin on skin touches could feel, it really had been a while since the two of them had come so close to another living breathing human being.

It almost felt surreal.

"What are you doing, Bookman Junior?" He tapped the toe of his boot against the carpeted hall as soon as he caught sight of the red hair with his body pinning someone else against the wall in plain sight from down the hall.

Rabi let out a small breath as though he had been thoroughly disappointed in who had caught him in the act. He quirked his head back and gave a lazy gaze before mocking a salute. "Fallin' in love, _sir_."

"We are in a war and you still have time to _love_?" He peered at the young man with a disapproving frown set on his lips.

"Love keeps the soldiers happy, sir." He turned his head back around with barely another gaze, fully offensive with his back turned against the other. And then he added as his hands finally let go of the tight black fabric that clung to the silent Japanese. "Haven't you heard 'bout Allen an' Rinali?"

"Allen Walker and Rinali Li?"

"Precisely sir." He turned around fully, tone still too bright to be polite. He slipped on a pout as he said, as though it had been an afterthought. "They're together and so I had been feelin' just a lil' lonely."

"Who may this lady that you are with then, Bookman Junior?" He pronounced each sound almost as though he was grinding those words out from deep within his throat.

"Well… my love is definitely no lady, even though his face may look more than a lil' feminine." He earned a sharp kick to the back of his knee. Caught by surprise, he kneeled straight to the ground with a faint gasp of pain. "Yuu—!"

His knees hit the ground and there was no time for him to curse at the Japanese for his violent gestures.

"There is no love. He is just venting out his sexual aggressions, Mr… Leverier." Kanda stated just when their eyes caught the same gaze. Leverier snorted at the sight of him and Kanda merely returned with a cool stare void of the amusement the other obviously found.

"So much for being the saviors of the world, _exorcists_." He almost spat out the last word in disgust. Rabi got up with a small scowl directed at both men in the dim hall. Kanda smirked as he reached out to tug at the red head's collar with a silent gesture of 'let's go'.

Kanda turned his head back and remarked, amusement lacing the words as they tumbled from his lips.

"At least we're getting some, _sir_."

**She loved him, but time may have changed that.**

She blamed herself. Why wouldn't she? It was her that pushed them away and it was her that pushed them right into the same direction. The way her two childhood friends sauntered out from the cafeteria reminded her of the past and how similar it was. Rabi would have a one sided conversation that Kanda couldn't have cared less about.

Only, she was left behind.

"Rinali."

Allen spoke up as he soaked in her words, taking it apart for an examination that was never really necessary. He understood that she was human but hated the thought almost just as much.

Rinali smiled and she felt that was all she could ever do for anyone. And she pushed everything to the back of her mind; attention focused solely on Allen and the nervous tinge he placed over her name. "Yes?"

The smile almost made Allen felt guilty for tearing open her old scars. But he did it none the less because he was Allen and she was Rinali and some things in the world were meant to happen, meant to surface and he was only tugging on the string for things to happen just a tad bit faster.

"You like Kanda."

He had no need for it to transform into a question. Allen don't need confirmation for things he knew for sure.

"Of course I do! We are childhood friends."

He rephrased it for her.

"You love him."

Her smile wilted just a little, the difference was hardly eye-catching.

"…you know?" Her voice came out quieter than they had both expected. Allen caught the flit of nervousness across her eyes and felt the guilt eating away at him from inside out.

"I found out." Allen replied with a nonchalant shrug.

"How?" She had let out before her brain could even process the word. And as it slipped from between her lips, she gave a wave of her hand and continued without pausing to give him a chance to reply. "It doesn't matter how you found out. Yes, I do like him."

"Still?" Rinali caught the troubled look that wavered upon Allen's face as he voiced his concern. She reached out and took his hand into hers before giving a small nod.

"In some ways."

"Why?" Allen leaned forward, feeling her grip tightened around his fingers. He looked at her; her bangs fell from her clip and obscured the pale cream flesh on her cheek.

She was confused herself and putting it into words for someone else seemed to be all the more difficult. She swallowed and let the words roll off of her tongue in a way that she didn't imagine it to be.

"He rooted me to reality."

Rinali gave a weary smile.

She let go of Allen's hand.

"Either way, he is Rabi's now."

"You think Kanda can actually be anyone's?" Allen asked incredulously with a sceptical glint to his eyes.

She let out a soft laugh, running a hand through her ebony locks. "When I loved him, he didn't like anyone, let alone love. Now, I don't know what is left anymore."

There was a pause and a silence that ate away at them, little by little, taking small nibbles at a time.

"He confuses me…"

Allen listened to the confession she quietly let out; he really couldn't say he was the least bit surprised. Maybe just curious as to why any girl could like Kanda.

She pushed the teacup away.

"Still, it is just a childish crush."

**He couldn't love anyone, even if he tried.**

There were secrets, littered all over the place.

But Kanda was the last person to have an interest in finding out anything because he knew secrets were feelings no one could act upon. And these dreams that they all had were out there, in their heads where they could never reach.

Their dreams could never be the expectations the world wanted.

And so he stayed quiet.

Kanda closed the door, he watched Rabi give a stretch before plopping right on to his bed without a care in the world. With the silence settled comfortably in the air, he moved from the door and took a seat on the only chair in the room; he fingered the edge of the splintered desk and turned his head to the red head.

He had met him when he was sixteen. Just two years and he had already gotten into his pants. Kanda almost let out a dry laugh at his own thoughts. He wasn't stupid, not the smartest maybe but he wasn't blind. Rabi didn't love him, never had, never will and he was perfectly fine with that.

Almost happy with the relationship they had right now.

He didn't need the red head for a friend, he had Rinali for that. And he most definitely did not need him for a rival; the bean sprout did a perfect job at that. Rabi was someone who could and could not be there, it didn't matter to him and he couldn't have cared less.

"Yuu," he started almost casually before kicking his boots off of his feet. Kanda frowned at his behaviour but didn't feel bothered enough to speak up and tell him to sit straight. Rabi picked out lint from his shirt and the questioning started out innocent enough.

"Do you love me?"

Kanda could barely hide the suspicion from his voice.

"Is that a trick question?"

Rabi shrugged and lay down on the bed.

"I just want to know the truth."

"The truth? …No, I don't even like you."

"Mmm…" Rabi didn't seem too sad to learn the truth and Kanda had no care in the world.

"Yuu," he started again and Kanda almost groaned out loud.

"What do you want?"

"One day, if I just suddenly upped and disappeared, what would you do?" Rabi asked and everything that left his lips felt so lonely drifting aimlessly in Yuu's room. Kanda propped his head up on his desk and stared out at the cracked window with an absentminded gaze.

"What _can_ I do?"

"Would you cry?"

He turned his head to take a look at the expression Rabi had on as he asked that question but Rabi had one arm placed over his face and from Kanda's angle, there was nothing worth seeing anyway.

"Cry over someone who never even existed?" Kanda laid his head on the desk and muttered out loud, musing on Rabi's past mentions of his identities. "Do you think I have enough tears to spare?"

Rabi let out a laugh; it felt lonely in the room like everything he had left behind here.

"I think the question is, do you even have tears to begin with, Yuu?"

Kanda turned away with a flick of his head, the black ebony in each strand made Rabi smile with a clenched pain of the girl he could not forget.

There was a moment of silence and then quietly, Kanda's reply crept back to him.

"Yeah… maybe."

Rabi laughed lightly with the charismatic charms he was told that he had. Sitting up on the bed, he tugged his headband down to his neck and shook his hair free from the restriction it was in everyday.

"Yuu."

Kanda had almost growled out with a clench of his fist at the annoying tone in Rabi's voice. "Yes?"

"Come here and give me a kiss."

Kanda didn't even move from his spot in the chair at the splintered desk. He only stretched out an arm and flicked out a middle finger in the other's direction.

Rabi laughed again at the reaction and stood up. Sauntering over, he gently tucked the finger back into its place and tugged Kanda to stand.

"Come on," he cooed with a grin daunting his lips. "Come give me a kiss."

Kanda looked up from the ground and glared.

"Go fuck yourself."

**He loved her, although he had no heart.**

He didn't love Kanda but he was kissing him and he was kissing back.

He did like him to a certain extent for all the qualities they shared, whether they will ever have the will to say it out loud. They were all too familiar for each of their own good.

He licked him, running his tongue along the skin.

"Yuu…" Before he could complete the rest of his thought, a palm came up and smacked him right on his face.

"Rabi, no more." Kanda scrunched up his eyes in annoyance. "I have had enough of your shit."

He saw her in him; beneath that first curtain of silk black hair he barely had the heart to touch. When Kanda closed his eyes in frustration, he caught the same distortion in the way their eyelashes would graze just along the skin. He looked like her, there was no doubt.

He was like her and she was like him.

And he was just selfish.

He leaned down, brushing his nose along the exposed collar of Kanda's neck. He gave a quiet laugh before leaning back, returning Kanda's personal bubble with two hands. He heard the other let out a soft sigh and from the corner of his eye; he could see him resting a palm over his face in a manner that the word 'exhaustion' could hardly come close to describing.

"You love her, I know that."

It rested in the air, just drifting in the air between them, waiting patiently for the red head to let them in. Rabi stared straight ahead, passed the ends of Kanda's ponytail that rested on his shoulder, his eye pinpointing right at the lotus in the hourglass.

Kanda's words felt like a stab in the heart he doesn't have and the bitter chuckle tumbled from his lips.

"When?"

Kanda stood still, there was a faint tilt of his head but otherwise, nothing else.

"Since the beginning."

Rabi didn't know whether he should laugh or feel terribly guilty for the ignorance but most of all, the assumptions he dumped on Yuu.

"I'm—"

Kanda dropped his hand and cut him off with a sharp edge to each word he let out. Each syllable was enunciated with a firmness that Kanda never bothered to used before. It was almost as though he was trying to confirm and deny everything that happened between them.

"I am not asking you to love me and neither do I want your love anyway. We are only together for the sex."

How blunt.

Rabi knew the distinct line between lies and truths, realities and dreams. And never once could he doubt the words that Kanda said. Because he never had a reason to lie and even when he did, those lies don't hurt one bit.

There was a thanks he owed to Yuu but the words refused to leave the tip of his tongue. Rather, something else slipped out, almost in a childish manner of a boy with his favourite toy taken away.

"She loves Allen."

She was a butterfly with all the right curves; she even had the glitter to her wings to complete the look or so he saw. Rabi pushed her away in his thoughts and focused solely on Kanda whose lips were finally loose from it's usual frown. There was a rare amused expression on his face.

"No she doesn't. Rinali doesn't love anyone."

Kanda shook his head and his ponytail slipped off his uniform with a silent whoosh. Rabi saw the irony that laced those lips and he looked down to where his hands just grazed at the other's fingertips.

And then Kanda's confession slipped out.

"She loves herself."

He understood that, after all Rinali was only human.

Rabi could hardly blame her.

"So do I."

**He loved her, because it was expected.**

Allen, he himself had buried the heart he had once given out because he could never say that he loved a dead man and no one else.

This was a world made of war. Dying young was a fact, Allen knew without a doubt.

Here she was. Almost too young and too beautiful to be real.

Yet, she was here to be loved and that was exactly what he did. He thought of her, as a lover, as a friend, as a sister, as a stranger.

Simply because she was here.

Rinali stood up, palms pressed to the table top with a determined gaze burning straight at him. Allen licked the spoon clean and followed her movements, the skirt that she wore bounced and he saw the lace beneath the first layer.

He looked away with a grimace meant for himself.

Allen was a gentleman and he would not reduce to peeking under dresses. He was not a hormonal teenager, at least not yet. Because he didn't want to be placed in the same category as Rabi who was basically driven by sex and neither was he Kanda, who ran on the rush of adrenaline.

Allen had a brain and he was determined to use it because he didn't want to turn out like Cross Marian. He knew the consequences to heart and head and it was enough to turn him away from a path of sex, alcohol and cigarettes.

He followed her and they turned, hallway after hallway, corridors after corridors, they passed by doors and went through doors.

Rinali gave no notice just hummed an inaudible tune under her breath.

At last, she burst open a door and light took over everything.

Her silhouette was against the sun.

And by the time he had adjusted to the sudden brightness, she was already outside.

"Where are we?" Allen asked with a curious stare. There was a welcoming feeling of warmth on his cheeks and the grass felt soft beneath his feet.

"Kanda's secret garden."

She grinned in the sun and twirled with a wave of her arms.

He looked around.

Lining the walls of the Order, there was a line of flowers, perhaps wild and perhaps carefully tended since seedling. It looked like a mess but Allen could see that everything was in a certain order that he couldn't categorize.

"He doesn't know that I know, so you can't tell him either."

Allen nodded with a faint teasing smile for the man who is absent. "I am not as stupid as to ask for a beating."

Rinali laughed lightly and took a seat on the grass. "It's simple really, Allen."

He laid down beside her and watched the clouds with a hazy stare. "I don't follow you, Rinali."

"Girls like bad boys."

"_Bad_ boys?"

Allen wanted a confirmation this time because he had a faint idea as to what she was referring to before that comment. It seemed like it dropped out of nowhere and he just couldn't seem find the origin.

"It's a girl thing. Though, Kanda only looks the part."

"Bad boys." Allen didn't seem to be capable of swallowing just those two words and he kept repeating them as though it would soon make sense. Rinali laughed and continued, hoping to erase the crease between Allen's eyebrows.

"Girls like bad boys but it is always the good guy that actually gets the girl."

She patted his thigh with a finger to the stem of a wild flower.

"What about Rabi?"

The question was left drifting in the mid-spring air.

"He is a friend."

There was no doubt in her eyes and nothing in the world could convince her of otherwise. Allen smiled bitterly, she never saw and he had no permission to tell the world that Rabi loved Rinali.

And how Rinali loved Kanda instead.

Because he would feel as though he had righteously murdered one after another.

"If he hears, his heart would be broken."

Allen looked up at the sky and it was too blue for the world to be fine. Rinali looked down at him, faintly smiled and replied, almost casually. "He only likes me as a friend."

Allen had enough decency to keep secrets not meant to fit the expectations they were tied firmly to. He smiled faintly and so did she.

"Perhaps."

Allen had always known that people understood his smiles the way they intended and so he smiled because it was always the right thing to do. He knew things that he never told anyone else because what he knew broke people's hearts and he hated seeing shattered dreams in such desperate times.

"Besides," Rinali broke off the stem and took a sniff of the flower she brought up to her nose. "He has too many secrets for a girl to believe in him."

"Then how are Kanda and Rabi together?"

Rinali smelled nothing and she tossed it away with a thin frown.

"Kanda doesn't believe in Rabi; he trusts him."

Allen watched as the flower sailed through the air across his vision and disappeared.

"Is it really that simple?"

"Who knows?"

Rinali laid down too.

XXX Kuro

This has to be one of those rare long fics that I actually complete XD Writing Kanda has to be the most fun I had in a while. But I feel so disappointed that my Allen turned out so bland and character-less D': Much love from me still, hope I get the same back from you all!~ V


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